Proclivities
by Rez1
Summary: Five missing scenes. Sark with Sydney Bristow and others.


Author: Rez  
Title: Proclivities  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Five missing scenes.  
Spoilers: Through 3.16 "Taken"  
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.

A/N: These were written for the LJ First Lines meme, in which a writer publishes a list of her stories' first lines and invites others to contribute short pieces using them. My thanks to the writers whose lines inspired me; their names are included below the title of each piece. The imperfect result is entirely my own.

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**Gold** (_Alias_ 3.02, "Succession")  
For eretria.

He shouldn't be here. He was going to fail without even knowing what was expected of him. The light of day was a numbing, crippling assault and he was deeply afraid that the no-place of his cell and all the eternities in it had ruined him. But someone had buried him two years ago and someone wanted him now and he, always reliable, waited upon events. Why, when his existence had never been his own, would the thought even occur to him? _My life. My life._ My life is in danger--

"--isn't it?"

A sudden ocean of sensory input, brain catching up with the rest of him: slick metal benches stinking permanently of disinfectant; air so dry it abraded the throat; freckled shoulders and amber-shot eyes. Had anyone ever touched him so lightly, so carefully? Perhaps that accounted for the impulse to speak.

It surprised them both. No doubt Sydney Bristow thought she knew his bartered soul better than most, but was there, conceivably, a suggestion of guilt in the stare she gave him in reply? He wanted to bend closer and breathe her in like air. He decided that there was.

Which was some satisfaction, anyway. He'd hoped for some scrap that might help explain the hard blue sky, for instance, that dazzled him through the open doors of the van, but Sydney only looked up, busy with the shackle-bolts. He was no better at reading her than he'd ever been. Possibly he'd been mistaken about the guilt.

The sight of her face had shocked him awake only hours ago. Now her hand was a warning at his back as the arid ground scorched his feet through the soles of his shoes. "You're up," she said, soft and ruthless, and out he went. A noisy, bloody hello, as it turned out, and weren't they all?

Ochre dust on his hands and in his throat, yellow blaze of sun pinning him to earth. He took his first real breath grinning down at the desert floor, or so it felt. Time, which had slowed, found its track again. He lost sight of Sydney in the thickening air.

When they showed him his patrimony he stared for a moment, then laughed and made the bargain as they'd known he would. There was no clause requiring him to forget whose hands had undone his chains and sent him out in the garish light to take his place again.

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**Proclivities** (_Alias_ 3.07, "Prelude")  
No borrowed first line here.

It went without saying that both her employer and husband were fools, but perhaps, he conceded, he had the advantage here, knowing the family so well. The resemblance was there if you knew to look.

"Open it," he told her, leaning in, and oh, yes, down to the smoky perfume of her white-gold hair, he knew her.

Which gave their exchange an air of unreality, he felt, but he was careful to explain things with all his accustomed courtesy. It had pleased her mother--and various others--once upon a time, and perhaps she knew that. Or perhaps not. Her hands on the envelope were steady.

He watched with interest her carefully played reaction to the photograph and its subject: a woman, a cousin, another counterfeit blonde--another Derevko, doing what they all do best.

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**Account Rendered** (_Alias_ 3.10, "Remnants")  
For Brix.

Bright light. Cold. He'd come to gagging on his own blood. His shirt was soaked black with Allison's by the time he reached the vehicle. He'd lost the box. He'd lost more than that.

Tippin. They'd simply failed to anticipate that contingency, an error he knew he'd pay for quite literally. The investment in Allison Doren had been considerable.

But they'd promised her more than that. In due time he'd collect what was owed her in turn, never mind that she'd sold him out and would have again as often as it paid her. He'd a fondness for monsters, having been bred one himself, and an inability to forget anything at all.

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**If** (_Alias_ 3.14, "Blowback")  
For Vanzetti.

It happens all at once and seems to take forever. Later he remembers the moment expanding like the skin of a soap-bubble, the smell of volatiles, hydraulic fluid, the cold metal sounds of the Lisbon docks.

_If you love her, drop the gun._

Even as he speaks he hears the echo rearrange itself: _You. Her. If._ It's a moment of perfect irony, generations of dynastic puppetry tangling with the here and now.

_Once upon a time there were three sisters and three daughters, and for each daughter there was--_

Michael Vaughn's weapon hits the catwalk then, and the bubble breaks.

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**Nerve** (_Alias_ 3.16, "Taken")  
For gabby silang.

They're playing that mysterious, ridiculous game again. He makes a move, she ups the ante, and here they are staring each other down in the Mexican sun--again. Two fathers, two daughters; the symmetry isn't lost, he's sure, on any of them.

_Use me_, with well-timed contempt: she's perfect, as always. Marcus Dixon had been a breath away from regrettable impulse. Jack Bristow, he knows, will calculate better. Approaching her with the collar, he's careful not to smile.

She's flushed and sweating lightly in the brutal sunlight. At no time does he permit his fingertips to touch her skin.

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End  
_October 11, 2004_


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